Government Consists Of Conversations

More than ten years ago, in what many governments considered the early days of the Internet, a now classic book, “The Cluetrain Manifesto”, came out about the Internet. The authors began the book with what they called 95 Theses, which they hoped that businesses would follow as they established a presence on the Internet – instead of using the Internet the way they had used all other forms of public communications.

These statements, though, have as much, if not more, relevance to government. So I decided to take their basic 95 Theses and substitute public sector words where they had words from the business world. The result is below. Hopefully this will trigger some new perspectives on your part as well.

Governing consists of conversations.

Society consists of human beings, not demographic sectors.

Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

In both internetworked citizenry and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.

These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

As a result, citizens are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked society changes people fundamentally.

People in networked societies have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from government agencies. So much for government rhetoric about the value of their professional way of doing things.

There are no secrets. The networked citizenry knows more than governments do about their own services and programs. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

What’s happening to citizens as a whole is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called “The State” is the only thing standing between the two.

Governments do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, governments sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of government —the sound of mission statements and press releases —will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

Already, governments that speak in the language of the spin, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

Governments that assume online citizens are the same citizens that used to watch their messages on television are kidding themselves.

Governments that don’t realize their citizens are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.

Public leaders can now communicate with their citizens directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.

Governments need to realize their citizens are often laughing. At them.

Government officials need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the government web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.

Governments attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their citizens actually care about.

Bombastic boasts—”We are positioned to become the preeminent nation/state/county/city“—do not constitute a position.

Government officials need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

Public Relations does not relate to the public. Governments are deeply afraid of their citizens.

By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep citizens at bay.

Most news releases, press conferences, and other government “messaging” programs are based on the fear that the citizens might see what’s really going on inside the government.

Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.”

Patriotic loyalty is the government version of going steady, but the breakup is inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are networked, smart citizens are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.

Networked citizens can change which government officials they prefer overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own service reductions, furloughs and layoffs taught us to ask the question: “Loyalty? What’s that?”

Smart citizens will find public leaders who speak their own language.

Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can’t be “picked up” at some tony conference.

To speak with a human voice, public leaders must share the concerns of their communities.

But first, they must belong to a community.

Governments must ask themselves where their bureaucratic cultures end.

If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no support among the citizens.

Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.

The community of discourse is the whole community.

Public leaders who do not belong to a community of discourse will no longer be leaders.

Governments make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against threats than against their own citizens and workforce.

As with networked citizens, people are also talking to each other directly inside the government—and not just about rules and regulations, executive directives, budgets.

Such conversations are taking place today on departmental intranets. But only when the conditions are right.

Governments typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other procedural information that workers are doing their best to ignore.

Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked organizational conversation.

A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.

While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to “improve” or control these networked conversations.

When intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked citizens.

Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.

Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.

Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.

Paranoia kills conversation. That’s its point. But lack of open conversation kills the effectiveness of government.

There are two conversations going on. One inside the government. One with the citizens.

In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.

As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked societies.

These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.

Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.

If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of IQ, then very few governments have yet wised up.

However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online perceive government agencies as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.

This is suicidal. Citizenswant to talk to public leaders.

Sadly, the part of the government a networked citizenry wants to talk to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings false—and often is.

Citizens do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the bureaucratic firewall.

De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those citizens. We want to talk to you.

We want access to your government information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.

We’re also the workers who make your agencies go. We want to talk to citizens directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a script.

As citizens, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless reports and third-hand studies to introduce us to each other?

As citizens, as workers, we wonder why you’re not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.

The inflated self-important jargon you sling around—in the press, at your conferences—what’s that got to do with us?

We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party.

Don’t worry, you can still hold power. That is, as long as it’s not the only thing on your mind.

Have you noticed that, in itself, power is kind of one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?

Your services are broke. Why? We’d like to ask the guys who deliver them. Your vision for society makes no sense. We’d like to have a chat with the President/Prime Minister/Governor/Mayor. What do you mean she’s not in?

We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.

We know some people from your government. They’re pretty cool online. Do you have any more like that you’re hiding? Can they come out and play?

When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If you didn’t have such a tight rein on “your people” maybe they’d be among the people we’d turn to.

When we’re not busy being your “voters,” many of us are your people. We’d rather be talking to friends online than watching the clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million dollar web site. But you tell us speaking to the citizen is the Public Information Officer’s job.

We’d like it if you got what’s going on here. That’d be real nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we’re holding our breath.

We have better things to do than worry about whether you’ll change in time to get our votes. Government and politics is only a part of our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?

We have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the light, some other public leader will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.

Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting than most legislative proceeding, more entertaining than any photo opportunity, and certainly more true-to-life than the government web sites we’ve been seeing.

Our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Public leaders that have no part in this world, also have no future.

Governments are spending [spent] billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can’t they hear this citizen timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.

We’re both inside the government and outside it. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they’re really just an annoyance. We know they’re coming down. We’re going to work from both sides to take them down.

To traditional governments, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.

We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

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